I understand your rationale but look at this way; woody has said the voting ballots were delayed twice by a day and both times it was due to technical issues. Secondly, Council took the step to question Jaffa about the situation as they too needed a clarification on the unusual scenario so isn't that a sign of them trying to be accomodating to all?

Let's try not to be too harsh on them and they might have at first been simply worried that this would set a precedent for any other voting matters like coding competition [there were 1 or 2 entries a few hours late this year which were rejected, IIRC] etc wrt late entries. After seeing the situation again they decided to consult Jaffa so not too bad isn't it?

If, after 1 month's delay, there are still fewer than 3 candidates; the outgoing council will decide - in conjunction with Nokia's Community Manager (currently Quim) - about how to proceed. The preferred solution is to encourage more members of the maemo.org community to participate and re-run the election, but all options are open.

In my book that's rather "creative" interpetation of spirit and written words of council election rules, to ask Jaffa after *initial* nomination period if - rather than doing extension of nomination period - they rather could go for a council of 2.
And Jaffa, aiui, didn't opt for "the rules say if there are more than 5 on end of nomination period, elections have to start one week later. even if all candidates died in an airplane crash meanwhile" But that's basically how SD69 reads the rules, he'd no way extend nomination period and rather go with a council of possibly *zero* living candidates to vote, while 500 living and willing, though late candidates were just waiting to self-nominate if only they extended nomination period.

you blackmailed the Council / Community by stating that you would withdraw you nomination as a candidate if / when Mentalist Traceur's (too) late self-nomination was denied.

since 9/11 hostage taking and similar act of terrorism are the felony but it doesn't make blackmailing a sinecure

Oh, so you're suggesting every mentioning of "either A or B" is blackmailing? When I ask the waiter "please get me the steak rare-medium, or if your kitchen can't do that, I'll take the spaghetti bolognese instead" that's as well blackmailing?

Community Council/Election Process
The 5 council members will be elected by the community.
Nominations will be accepted 2 weeks before the election begins from any community member with a karma of 100 or above.
Elections last for 1 week.
Only community members who have had maemo.org accounts for over 3 months, and have karma of 10 or above, may vote.
Each community member eligible to vote gets a single ballot.
The 5 nominees voted for most, as counted by a single transferrable vote system are elected.
Nominees with a professional interest in Maemo, such as working for Nokia - or any other company involved in Maemo-related software development - must declare their interest when advertising their nomination. Failure to do so may result in the Nokia Community Manager, or the outgoing Council, declaring their nomination invalid and so bar them from standing in the current election.
There is no limit to the number of times a council member can stand for re-election.
The date of the next election will be set by the council chair, not more than 6 months after the previous election.
The election date must be publicised at least 1 month in advance of the election.If fewer than 5 candidates stand for election, the 3 with the most votes are elected to the council.If there are fewer than 3 candidates when the nominations close, the election cannot be held.*)
The nomination period will be extended by 1 month and the election postponed similarly.
If, after 1 month's delay, there are still fewer than 3 candidates; the outgoing council will decide - in conjunction with Nokia's Community Manager (currently Quim) - about how to proceed. The preferred solution is to encourage more members of the maemo.org community to participate and re-run the election, but all options are open.
Changes to any of the above rules must be approved by community referendum.
Voting in such referenda will be open to anyone eligible to vote in the council elections.
The referendum options must be debated for a minimum of 1 month prior to the referendum.
Referendum voting will be open for the same length of time as the council elections.

*) any sane interpretation of this rule would be to extend the validity of the if statement until the then statement actually takes effect, IOW "If at end of nomination or any later point in time until start of election there are fewer than 3..." However notice that council decided to take a shortcut to not run any vote, based on the (not entirely insane) rationale that with 3 candiidates there'll be no use in any vote - but still it's an invented made-up rule bending the verbatim regulations for council election. Declaring withdrawal an illegal move even more is, particularly if the purpose is to avoid proper application of the rule about "less than 3..." and nomination extension resulting from that

The reasoning of my initial withdrawal wasn't to blackmail or take hostage, but to help council to allow then do the right thing in spirit of election rules, rather than bend a rule (the one about nomination closing [edit]two weeks[/edit] before vote starts). Council however, for very obscure and non-disclosed reasons, decided to antagonise this idea by not going the golden bridge I built for them but rather invent new rules (withdrawal forbidden) and ignore/bend others (no council of less than 3 people, some other rules as well), just to establish a situation that's obviously the opposite of what rules were intended for (a council with preferrably 5 elected by vote members)

I'd rather question the legitimacy of current council's announcement of a 2 seats new council, without even bothering to explain how they came to think that's what the spirit and words of council election rules suggest should be done. To me it's pretty evident that all spirit of rules is to interpret them in a way so we get more candidates and finally maximum number of council members, rather than deliberately shortening the process by just ignoring/tweaking/inventing rules to not extend nomination period.

the only thing you are proving here is that your EGO is much more important to you then this community.

for sure my SANITY is more important to me than YOU and your weird demonstrations of how you're not getting a single bit of all this. Chill, buddy, council elections are cancelled, they've been before I posted my initial post regarding mentalist and nothing changed since then and probably nothing will change, so all you can lose here is your opportunity to rage against my attempts to bring proper votes to community. I suggest you better ignore this thread since for you it's actually moot.

Oh, so you're suggesting every mentioning of "either A or B" is blackmailing? When I ask the waiter "please get me the steak rare-medium, or if your kitchen can't do that, I'll take the spaghetti bolognese instead" that's as well blackmailing?

[...]

you are not ordering from a "menu"...
you have been standing at the bar, barely able to keep up for too many hours, emptying one drink after the other picking a fight with every other guest and when the bar tender asks you to pay you start shouting
"not before i had another drink!"

__________________
information is a necessary though no sufficient condition to rationality...

you are not ordering from a "menu"...
you have been standing at the bar, barely able to keep up for too many hours, emptying one drink after the other picking a fight with every other guest and when the bar tender asks you to pay you start shouting
"not before i had another drink!"